Enter QUEEN, BUSHY, and BAGOT BUSHY Madam, your majesty is too much sad:
You promised, when you parted with the king, To lay aside life-harming heaviness And entertain a cheerful disposition. QUEEN To please the king I did; to please myself I cannot do it; yet I know no cause Why I should welcome such a guest as grief, Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest As my sweet Richard: yet again, methinks, Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb, Is coming towards me, and my inward soul With nothing trembles: at some thing it grieves, More than with parting from my lord the king. BUSHY Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows, Which shows like grief itself, but is not so;
For sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears, Divides one thing entire to many objects;
Like perspectives, which rightly gazed upon Show nothing but confusion, eyed awry Distinguish form: so your sweet majesty, Looking awry upon your lord's departure, Find shapes of grief, more than himself, to wail;
Which, look'd on as it is, is nought but shadows Of what it is not. Then, thrice-gracious queen, More than your lord's departure weep not: more's not seen;
Or if it be, 'tis with false sorrow's eye, Which for things true weeps things imaginary. QUEEN It may be so; but yet my inward soul Persuades me it is otherwise: howe'er it be, I cannot but be sad; so heavy sad As, though on thinking on no thought I think, Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink. BUSHY 'Tis nothing but conceit, my gracious lady. QUEEN 'Tis nothing less: conceit is still derived From some forefather grief; mine is not so, For nothing had begot my something grief;
Or something hath the nothing that I grieve:
'Tis in reversion that I do possess;
But what it is, that is not yet known; what I cannot name; 'tis nameless woe, I wot.
Enter GREEN GREEN God save your majesty! and well met, gentlemen:
I hope the king is not yet shipp'd for Ireland. QUEEN Why hopest thou so? 'tis better hope he is;
For his designs crave haste, his haste good hope:
Then wherefore dost thou hope he is not shipp'd? GREEN That he, our hope, might have retired his power, And driven into despair an enemy's hope, Who strongly hath set footing in this land:
The banish'd Bolingbroke repeals himself, And with uplifted arms is safe arrived At Ravenspurgh. QUEEN Now God in heaven forbid! GREEN Ah, madam, 'tis too true: and that is worse, The Lord Northumberland, his son young Henry Percy, The Lords of Ross, Beaumond, and Willoughby, With all their powerful friends, are fled to him. BUSHY Why have you not proclaim'd Northumberland And all the rest revolted faction traitors? GREEN We have: whereupon the Earl of Worcester Hath broke his staff, resign'd his stewardship, And all the household servants fled with him To Bolingbroke. QUEEN So, Green, thou art the midwife to my woe, And Bolingbroke my sorrow's dismal heir:
Now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy, And I, a gasping new-deliver'd mother, Have woe to woe, sorrow to sorrow join'd. BUSHY Despair not, madam. QUEEN Who shall hinder me?
I will despair, and be at enmity With cozening hope: he is a flatterer, A parasite, a keeper back of death, Who gently would dissolve the bands of life, Which false hope lingers in extremity.
